The brutal business of art fairs and a former V&A director's private collection goes under the hammer

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The brutal business of art fairs

Now that so many art dealers say they do more business at art fairs than back home in their galleries, the number of fairs globally has multiplied and with it has come a deadly sense of cut-throat competition.

A small but telling example is the publication of a detailed art market report by Art Basel, sponsored by UBS Bank. This report, produced by the economist Clare McAndrew, used to be one of the highlights every March of the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht, which funded the research.

But last year, McAndrew was persuaded to jump ship and go with the Art Basel brand, and her first report for them was launched to coincide with the opening of the Art Basel Hong Kong fair later in the month.

TEFAF, meanwhile produced a rival report with a different author. However this year, TEFAF has stepped back from the contest and will not produce a report. But Basel will, and to rub salt into the wound, will launch it earlier - this Friday while TEFAF is still up and running.

The Other Fair to relocate for October's Frieze

Looking ahead to October, I learn that artist-run The Other Fair, which has occupied the old Truman Brewery in East London during Frieze week for five years, must look for another venue because the rent is going up and a new, plusher fair for galleries will move in this year or next.

“We’re gutted,” says The Other Fair’s founder, Ryan Stanier. Meanwhile, his March edition of the fair opens, unchallenged, in Bloomsbury Square next week.

Former V&A director's private collection goes under the hammer

What do museum directors collect for themselves? After a day surrounded by the best quality objects in a variety of disciplines, what do they go home to? The question arises with the pending sale at the enterprising West London saleroom, 25 Blythe Road, of the private collection of Dr Alan Borg, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1995 to 2001.

Borg formed an absorbing interest in British War Memorials during his earlier post as Director General of the Imperial War Museum in the 1980s. "Such memorials are by far the commonest public monuments in this country," he writes in his forward to the sale catalogue, "but there was no central record of them and no account of their design and building."

Design for the First World War Memorial in Albury Church by Gerald Fenwicke Metcalfe

Borg went on to set up the National Inventory of War Memorials, recording over 70,000 of them, and began collecting designs. One of them was made for Albury Church in Surrey by local artist, Gerald F. Metcalfe, who used the village postman as a model for a relief figure.

Some of the designs were never built; five drawings by Herbert Hampton, for instance, were made in a competition for an equestrian memorial to Earl Haig in Whitehall, which he didn’t win.

The majority of Borg’s designs are for First World War memorials, and include stained glass windows, hospitals and even a cricket pavilion. The sale is on March 28 and prices range from £100 - £1,000.